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Towards Sustainable Management Of The Sardinella Fishery In Ghana, Evans Kwasi Arizi

Open Access Dissertations

Many local fishermen in Ghana depend on the sardinella fishery for their livelihoods. Flat sardinella (Sardinella maderensis) and round sardinella (Sardinella aurita) are the two main fish species that are exploited in the fishery. Landings of the sardinella stocks, however, have been declining for over a decade now as a result of overfishing engendered by overcapacity, open access fishery and weak governance. The focus of this work was to chart the path towards a sustainable management of the fishery in Ghana by identifying the key extractive components of the fishery, ascertaining the interactions among them and …

Nanoparticle-Cell Membrane Interactions: Adsorption Kinetics And The Monolayer Response, Nasim Ganji

Open Access Dissertations

The fast-growing production and utilization of nanomaterials in diverse applications will undoubtedly lead to the release of these materials into the environment. As nanomaterials enter the environment, determining their interaction with biological systems is a key aspect to understanding their impact on environmental health and safety. It has been shown that engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) can interact with cell membranes by adhering onto their surface and compromising their integrity, permeability, and function. The interfacial and biophysical forces that drive these processes can be examined using lipid monolayers or bilayers as model cell membranes.

Interfacial interactions between NPs and cell membranes have …

Bad Gurley Feminism: The Myth Of Post-War Domesticity, Erin Amann Holliday-Karre

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

According to feminist history, the 1950s constitute a lapse in feminist literature as women in the post-war era were ushered into the realm of domesticity. In this article I argue that this perceived literary “gap” was both created and perpetuated by feminist historians and scholars who insist that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) was the defining feminist text of the time. I offer an alternative discourse to that of Friedan by presenting feminist writers who challenge, rather than adopt, masculine ideology as the means to women’s empowerment. I end by encouraging feminists to allow commonly dismissed feminists from the …

The Growth Of Chlorella Vulgaris Cultured In Liquid Organic Fertilizer Of Water Hyacint H (Eichhornia Crassipes) At Different Salinities, Wa Iba, Citra Utami, Abdul M. Balubi

Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Sciences Faculty Publications

This study aims to determine the effect of salinity on the growth of microalgae C. vulgaris cultured in 5% concentration of water hyacinth liquid organic fertilizer. The research used a completely randomized design with four salinity treatments at 30, 35, 40 and 45 ppt in triplicates. The volume of culture media was 150 mL that consisted of 142.5 ml of sterile sea water and 7.5 ml of water hyacinth organic fertilizer. The increase in microalgae cell density was observed every other day using haemocytometer under light microscope. The culture was harvested after they reached stationary phase at day 8. Culture …

Catch Composition And Selectivity Of Fishing Gears In A Multi-Species Indonesian Coral Reef Fishery, Austin T. Humphries, Kelvin D. Gorospe, Paul G. Carvalho, Irfan Yulianto, Tasrif Kartawijaya, Stuart J. Campbell

Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Sciences Faculty Publications

There are millions of small-scale fishers worldwide that rely on coral reefs for their livelihood. Yields from many of these coral reef fisheries, however, have been declining. In Indonesia and other coral reefs worldwide, management approaches are dominated by marine protected areas but other options including gear-restrictions may be feasible and more adaptive to local ecological and social conditions. Yet, there is little data on the impacts and selectivity of fishing gears for coral reef fisheries. In this paper, we present results from a case study on the island of Lombok, where we examine the selectivity and overlap in catch …

Population Genetic Structure Of Sardinella Aurita And Sardinella Madurensis In The Eastern Central Atlantic Region (Cecaf) In West Africa, Evelyn Takyi

Open Access Master's Theses

Marine fishes represent a valuable resource for the global economy and food consumption, but many species experience high levels of exploitation necessitating effective management plans. Long term sustainability of these resources may be jeopardized from insufficient knowledge about intra-specific population structure. Restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) methods are revolutionizing the field of population genomics in non-model organisms as they can generate a high number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) even when no reference genomic information is available. Sardinella aurita and Sardinella maderensis are non-model species lacking reference genomes. Using double-digest restriction-site associated DNA (ddRAD) sequencing, we surveyed variation in 6,078 …

Means, Genes, And Meanings: Scientific Underpinnings For Personal Growth And Lasting Happiness, Joshua Ray Tanzer

Open Access Master's Theses

Statement of the problem: Positive psychology has led to a proliferation of research on many positive phenomena, however there lacks theoretical organization among constructs (Gable & Haidt, 2005; Held, 2004; Pawelski, 2016). In an effort to ground research on diverse but related subjects, Christine Winston (2016) suggested that there may be a more basic developmental process underpinning phenomena. Her theory relies heavily on existentialism and humanistic psychology with no data analysis included as empirical validation. The goal of this thesis is to provide a scientific analysis of the credibility of her claims.

Methods: The first manuscript is a metrical analysis …

Dynamics Of The Late Triassic Adamanian-Revueltian Extinction, Petrified Forest National Park, Az, Reilly F. Hayes

Open Access Master's Theses

In the Late Triassic of Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO), AZ, the coincidence of high-precision geochronology and robust lithostratigraphy allows an adaption of the Bayesian statistical approaches of Haslett and Parnell (2008) and Alroy (2014) to quantify the dynamics of a Late Triassic vertebrate extinction and replacement, the Adamanian-Revueltian (A-R) faunal turnover. This analysis indicates negligible probability of synchroneity of Adamanian extinctions and Revueltian originations. This protracted reconstruction of the A-R turnover decouples the event from the geologically instantaneous Manicouagan impact (215.4 + 0.20 Ma; Québec, Canada), previously implicated as a causal mechanism.

Maternal Blood Pressure In Relation To Low Birth Weight And The Effect Of A Nutritional Supplement, Alyssa Abreu

Open Access Master's Theses

Background: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy impact over 10% of pregnancies worldwide, while increasing the risk of low birth weight. Research is conflicting on the effect of nutrient supplementation on hypertension during pregnancy. The cutoffs to define hypertension have also recently changed to include a lower systolic blood pressure, and little research has examined the association between the newly proposed blood pressure cutoffs and low birth weight.

Objectives: Our objectives were to 1) evaluate the impact of prenatal lipid-based nutrient supplement consumption on maternal blood pressure; and 2) assess the association between maternal blood pressure during early and late …

Knowledge Concerning Health Factors And Cognitive Performance: Development And Expert Validation Of A Perceptions Questionnaire, Caitlin Ogram Buckley

Open Access Master's Theses

The promotion of brain health is often perceived through an illness model, as research tends to focus on risk reduction in regards to neurodegenerative disease. However, research indicates that healthy individuals can potentially improve their cognitive performance through the adoption of health-promoting behaviors such as diet, exercise, and the management of chronic medical conditions (e.g. Type 2 Diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol). It is less clear how well this message has been disseminated to the general public. The current study aims to advance a critical foundation for brain health research by developing a questionnaire to assess public beliefs …

When The Alternative Becomes Hegemonic: A Textual Analysis Of The Royal Tenenbaums, Patrick Crowe

Open Access Master's Theses

Wes Anderson has been designated by many as one of the first ‘Indiewood’ directors. While his films possess a quirky, atypical, and oddball visual and aesthetic style, at least one of his films, The Royal Tenenbaums, offers performances of gender and race—particularly of white masculinity—that reinforce a number of gender and racial stereotypes (Beynon, 2002; Buchbinder, 2013; Connell, 1995; Kimmel, 1996; Moss, 2011). In this thesis, I conduct a critical textual analysis on The Royal Tenenbaums to illuminate the retrogressive gender and racial ideas that Anderson uses to constitute various performances or models of white masculinity. Most of my …

The Impact Of Sexual Health Curricula On College Students’ Attitudes Towards Transgender People, Crassandra Mandojana-Ducot

Open Access Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore first year college student’s attitudes and beliefs towards transgender people and whether high school sexual health curricula are related to the development of these beliefs. This study examined attitudes that current first year college students hold towards transgender people. The students were probed to recall whether they were exposed to comprehensive sexual health curricula versus abstinence-only curricula. A second purpose was to examine if their participation in their high school Gay-Straight-Alliances (GSA) predicted their attitudes towards transgender people as measured on the three scales of the Transgender Attitude and Belief Scale (TABS): …

Design Of A Modular Soft Continuum Robotic Arm, Thomas Schwarz

Open Access Master's Theses

In this thesis, a modular design of a soft continuum robotic arm is developed. This design enables the connection of an arbitrary number of identical modules in order to build a snake-like robot in a plug-and-play fashion. After introducing the purpose and motivation of this research, the necessary basics for this project are presented, followed by a review of existing soft continuum robots in the state of the art. The main part of this work starts with presenting the design of the required 3D manufactured parts as well as the fabrication of the soft deformable body of the robot. With …

Ontogeny Of The Lateral Line And Visual Systems Of A Caribbean Reef Goby, Elacatinus Lori, Katie R. Nickles

Open Access Master's Theses

Chapter 1

Gobies (Family Gobiidae) have a complex mechanosensory lateral line system composed of reduced cranial and trunk canals and a proliferation of small superficial neuromasts, perched on the tips of “sensory papillae”, which occur in several linear series on the head, trunk and tail. Elacatinus lori is being used as a model species for larval orientation and dispersal and the ability to rear it in the lab has allowed the use of a suite of morphological methods to provide the first description of the post-embryonic development of the lateral line system from hatch through settlement and to adulthood for …

Chlorine Disinfection Byproduct Management In Rhode Island Source Waters Using Led-Based Uv-C Disinfection, Hichem Hadjeres

Open Access Master's Theses

High loads of natural organic matter (NOM) in source waters increase levels of toxic disinfection byproducts (DBPs) during treatment, including trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), which are formed when NOM is chlorinated. Rates of NOM loading and, by extension, DBP formation potential vary spatially and temporally, and depend on land use within the watersheds. While non-chemical disinfection is typically based on mercury UV lamps, LED-based disinfection systems are being considered as an energy efficient alternative, since they require a fraction of the energy used by mercury lamps. This study explores the efficacy of a novel water treatment process for …

Occurrence And Formation Of N-Dbps In Rhode Island Drinking Waters, Maxwell C. Meadows

Open Access Master's Theses

N-nitrosamines are toxic compounds that have persistently been associated with water treatment processes since the 1970’s. There are currently no federal regulations for N-nitrosamines in drinking water, however few states have established their own guidelines. Many studies have identified major mechanisms of N-nitrosamine formation during water treatment, however a gap in knowledge still exists regarding the formation of select N-nitrosamines from treatment of clean water sources. Performance of such critical research is often an expensive process, leaving many facilities and institutions resorting to other approaches for analysis. In the case of this research, efforts were made to develop a lower-cost, …

Molecular Mechanisms Of Protein Binding By Perfluoroalkyl Substances (Pfass), Michael Fedorenko

Open Access Master's Theses

Comparative investigation of the intermolecular chemical interaction (binding) between bovine serum albumin (BSA) and four polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFOA, PFNA, PFHxS, PFOS) by ¹⁹F NMR spectroscopy with synchronous observation of the ¹⁹F signals from both ends (head and tail) of the polyfluoroalkyl molecules was performed at three temperatures of 298K, 304K and 310K.

Chemical shifts of ¹⁹F NMR peaks in solutions of PFAS with BSA were used for evaluation of the dissociation constants, K_d, for both known mechanisms of PFAS binding with BSA: by hydrophobic interaction of the PFAS molecule tail with hydrophobic pockets in the …

Distinguishing Living And Non-Living Surface Deposition On Serptentine: Implications For Biosignatures And Astrobiology, Alexander Sousa

Open Access Master's Theses

Serpentinizing systems host long-lived reactions in which an ultramafic (or mafic) rock package, rich in reduced species, is progressively metamorphosed via hydration and oxidation into a serpentine-dominated mineral assemblage. On Earth, this process drives redox gradients in related water-rock systems: hydrogen gas is produced, reduced minerals are transformed to oxidized counterparts, and hydrocarbon chains (with potential to fuel chemosynthetic microbes) are released. The life sustaining capacity and abundance of serpentinite on/in silicate planetary bodies make such systems astrobiologically intriguing.

The Mars 2020 rover, equipped with a DUV Raman, is likely to explore serpentinite deposits (exposed selectively at crater rim sites) …

Development Of A Paper-Based Microfluidic Device For The Detection Of Orthophosphate In Water, Brenno Ribeiro

Open Access Master's Theses

Phosphate is an essential nutrient for plant life in water that when in abundance can have a series of adverse effects on an ecosystem. As such it is of great interest to scientists and environmentalists alike to detect phosphate in the environment. The current state of detection technology leaves much to be desired however as devices are insensitive, ineffective, and sometimes expensive. This study presents a series of methods, systems, and devices that were developed in the pursuit of advancing the state of detection of orthophosphate in water. A lab-on-chip device was created utilizing the molybdenum blue reaction with a …

The Role Of Childhood Trauma In The Associations Among Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Emotional Reactivity, And Emotion Dysregulation: A Moderated Mediation Model, Svetlana Goncharenko

Open Access Master's Theses

A substantial body of research over the past decade underscores the role of emotion dysregulation in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Notably, however, this research has been limited in its lack of attention to factors that may influence (e.g., childhood trauma) or explain (e.g., emotional reactivity) the association of emotion dysregulation to PTSD and inform intervention efforts. The current study addresses these limitations by using a moderated mediation approach to examine the role of childhood trauma (i.e., moderator) in the associations among PTSD (i.e., independent variable), objective and subjective emotional reactivity (i.e., mediating variable), and emotion dysregulation (i.e., dependent variable). In …

Applications Of Centered Kernel Target Alignment In Inductive Logic Programming, Benjamin H. Ott

Open Access Dissertations

This study aimed both to apply centered kernel target alignment (CKTA) to inductive logic programming (ILP) in several different ways and to apply a complete refinement operator in a practical setting. A new genetic algorithm (GA) results from the research, utilizing a complete, locally finite refinement operator and also incorporating CKTA both as a fitness score and as a means for the promotion of diversity. As a fitness score, CKTA can either be used standalone or as a contributor to a hybrid score which utilizes the accuracy (weighted or normal) of the learned logic hypothesis as well. In terms of …

In Storage Process, The Next Generation Of Storage System, Dongyang Li

Open Access Dissertations

In conventional computer systems, software relies on the CPU to handle the process applications and assign computation tasks to heterogeneous accelerators such as GPU, TPU and FPGA. It requires the CPU to fetch data out of the storage device and move the data to the heterogeneous accelerators. After the accelerators complete computation tasks, the results are flushed to the main memory of the host server for software applications. In this architecture, the heterogeneous accelerators are located far away from the storage device. There are data movements on the system bus (NVM-express/PCI-express), which requires a lot of transmission time and bus …

A Wearable, Configurable Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy System For Wireless Neuroimaging, Manob Jyoti Saikia

Open Access Dissertations

Decoding the human's brain functional architecture is the most profound and far-reaching scientific challenges of our time. Currently existing noninvasive brain imaging technologies are constrained by costly, bulky and fixed hardware that preclude imaging of the functioning brain in a wide range of temporal and naturalistic environments.

This doctoral dissertation focused on designing and developing of a new generation portable, wearable, configurable, and wireless functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging system that allows us to monitor and study brain function in a naturalistic environment. The developed optical system maps changes in chromophore concentration, oxy hemoglobin (HbO₂) and deoxyhemoglobin (Hb) …

An Intelligent Design Explorer For New Violin Shapes, Hao Wang

Open Access Master's Theses

The origins of evolutionary computation can be traced back to the late 1950s and started to receive significant attention during the 1980s. Pioneers have done a lot of research by using evolutionary computation, especially in the field of design, music, and art. This article focuses on the violin outline design, which is a very tiny segment of design. By using the evolution strategies algorithm, the violin explorer, a violin design tool has been developed. Meanwhile, by introducing user interaction steps, the violin explorer became a creative evolutionary system. With this system, ordinary people without any design knowledge can create their …

Evaluation Of A Novel Passive Sampler For Poly- And Perfluoroalkyl Substances In Aquatic Environments, Christine Gardiner

Open Access Master's Theses

Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are of growing concern worldwide, due to their ubiquitous presence and adverse health effects in humans and the environment. Surface waters in the northeastern United States in particular have displayed elevated concentrations of PFASs. Passive sampling devices are excellent monitoring tools, that accumulate contaminant loadings through passive diffusion and adsorption to the sampler, and provide a long-term, time-weighted average of the contaminant over large temporal and spatial scales. Here we utilize a novel integrative passive sampler—a microporous polyethylene (PE) tube filled with Hydrophilic-Lipophilic-Balanced sorbent—to gain a better understanding of its function, utility, and uptake rates …

A Mixed-Effects Regression Model With Application To Longitudinal Missing At Random Microbiome Data, Manushi K.V. Welandawe

Open Access Master's Theses

Gut microbiota in the human lower gastrointestinal tract can impact the health through human functions as well as triggering numerous diseases. The colonization of the microbiota occurs immediately after the birth of an infant. Early life factors can highly influence the composition of gut microbiome, which ultimately affects infant's health. Therefore, the relationship between microbiome composition and clinical outcomes of preterm infants observed in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) is of critical importance. To study this relationship, it is common to use longitudinal study designs. One of the major challenges in these designs is the huge percentage of missingness of …

The Effect Of Season Upon The Life Cycle Of Haemonchus Contortus In Experimentally Infected Lambs, Marissa Brummett

Open Access Master's Theses

This project was developed to study the life cycle of the most pathogenic gastrointestinal nematode (GIN) affecting small ruminants, Haemonchus contortus. The main goal of the study was to test the effects that the environment and the age of the adult worm have on the resulting egg’s ability to hatch in vitro and the larvae’s ability to undergo exsheathment both artificially in vitro as well as in vivo within the rumen. A secondary study objective was to compare the results from the two exsheathment assays in order to see how well they correlate.

This study was designed to run …

Minimizing Bee Bycatch In Japanese Beetle Traps, Steven J. Sipolski

Open Access Master's Theses

Native and introduced bees were attracted to and captured in commercially available Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica Newman, traps baited with floral lure components (geraniol, eugenol, phenethyl propionate [3:7:3]). Studies in Rhode Island found that Bombus impatiens Cresson was significantly more attracted to geraniol alone and as a component in a floral lure blend than to either eugenol or phenethyl propionate alone. Xylocopa virginica L. was more selective in being primarily attracted to traps baited with higher amounts of geraniol in 2016. In 2016, 32 baited and eight unbaited traps captured 856 B. impatiens and 124 X. virginica in 11 days …

My Selfie-Image: An Artist’S Multimedia Perspective To Self-Discovery, Kelly Ahern

Open Access Master's Theses

The world we live in today is filled with different types of media and images constantly. Online technology allows for the exchange of this mass media instantly. With so much media swarming our daily lives, social media and visual imagery have become a part of our culture creating new forms of visual and perceptual communication to thrive online. Social media allows for an organizational system in which symbolic and expressive elements of visual culture are formed. This visual culture draws new platforms of social structures and interactions that include visual imagery such as pictures, videos, emoticons, gifs, memes, etc. Every …

Deep Learning Of Human Apparent Age For The Detection Of Sexually Exploitative Imagery Of Children, Jared Rondeau

Open Access Master's Theses

Over the last decade, advancements in deep learning and computer vision have led to a tremendous growth in performance at the tasks of automated human age estimation and nudity detection. Modern machine learning models can predict whether or not an image contains nudity or the presence of a minor with startling accuracy. When used in conjunction, these technological advancements can be used to identify new instances of child pornography without ever coming into contact with the illicit material during model training.

In this thesis, a label distribution learning framework for modeling human apparent age is proposed. Instead of directly modeling …